Knights of the Cross

by Tom Harper

  I had just scrambled back to the path, having been drawn away by a stone covered in pine blossom, when I saw her. She was standing on the far bank of the stream: a dark-haired woman, her head uncovered, in a dress which seemed much stained with mud and berries. There were leaves tangled in her hair, and had it not been for the hardness of her face I might have believed her a nymph or dryad.

  ‘What do you want?’ she called. Her dialect was Frankish, and her voice strangely harsh against the surroundings. ‘Do you want for pleasure, far from home? I can help you forget your suffering, for a little while.’

  I closed my eyes. I knew why the villagers called this the valley of sin. Three months earlier, fearing that the impieties of the Army of God might be the reason why its campaign had faltered, Bishop Adhemar had expelled all women from the camp. As an attempt to stamp out sin, it had failed utterly; if anything, it had only spawned worse vices. After a few days the women had begun to drift back into the camp, their presence thenceforth ignored by Adhemar, but there was talk that some had made a new home in the glades of this valley, where the tempted of the army could indulge their lusts more privately.

  ‘I am looking for a house called the house of the sun,’ I said. ‘Do you know of it?’

  She shook her head, her long hair swinging freely behind. ‘I need no houses for my affairs.’

  ‘May I ask – did four Norman knights come here once, perhaps a month ago?’

  ‘Many men come here: Normans, Provençals, Franks, Lotharingians. Even Greeks.’

  ‘These men did not come for such pleasures, I think. There were four of them,’ I said again.

  As brazenly as if she were alone, the woman reached into the folds of her skirt and scratched herself between her legs. ‘I saw them.’

  My hopes quickened. ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘They had a bullock with them. It screamed horribly.’ Deliberately ignoring me, she seated herself on a rock and dipped her naked toes into the stream. The water rippled around them. ‘None of us dared go near.’

  ‘Near where?’

  She looked up, coiling a lock of hair about her finger. ‘How much would you value it?’

  ‘Half a bezant.’ It was the only coin in my purse, and I was loath to spend it on this harlot. But in the pursuit of secrets, even worthless ones, I have ever been spendthrift.

  She smiled, though there was no joy in it. ‘For half a bezant, I could give you more than knowledge.’

  As she spoke, there must have been a touch of a breeze, for the scents of pine and laurel were suddenly thick on my senses. They cloyed about me, sickly smells bespeaking all manner of sweet damnation. For a moment, even the harlot’s face seemed kinder.

  I shook my head, as much to myself as to her, and held up the coin so that she could see it. ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘There.’ She pointed to a low-lying patch of ruins, further down the valley where the slopes became cliffs. ‘They went in there.’

  I threw the coin across the stream. She caught it one-handed, the arm of her dress sliding back as she reached out. ‘They would not lie with me either.’

  I called Sigurd and the others to join me, and walked slowly towards the ancient villa. High trees had grown around it, shading it with the canopy of their leaves, while shrubs and flowers flourished among the masonry. Two walls were all that remained standing: the rest, the detritus of atria, baths, colonnades and fountains were piled in broken heaps around me. A fluted column lay between the two posts of a door that had long since rotted to oblivion. I stepped over it, and looked for any sign that the whore had spoken truthfully.

  ‘Here.’ Moving more impatiently than I, Sigurd had already reached the back of the ruin. Its rear wall must have been built sheer against the cliff, though it had mostly collapsed now, for I could see square crevices cut in the rock where stones had once been fixed. Where Sigurd stood, a few blocks remained as the ancient masons had laid them, the surrounds of a long-disused fireplace. As I approached, I saw what he had seen: two suns, their rays like spikes, engraved into the wall on either side of the hearthstone.

  ‘Those carvings,’ I exclaimed. ‘Are there any other markings?’

  To my surprise, Sigurd bellowed with laughter. It echoed off the high cliffs above and startled a flock of birds into flight. ‘Truly, Demetrios Askiates does discover what other men do not. Who else would see those scratchings, and miss what lay at his feet?’

  I looked down. It had been hidden by the high weeds as I approached, and my stare had then been fixed on the wall, but now I could see what Sigurd meant. On a patch of ground before the hearth, curiously free of any growth or dirt, a broad mosaic of a burning sun gazed up at the sky. Its beams wriggled and twisted like snakes in yellow and orange, trimmed with gold, and from its centre the untamed face of Phoebus Apollo gazed on us. His wild hair branched and forked from his head, spraying out into the surrounding beams, while his plump nose and swollen eyes looked more like a satyr’s than a god’s.

  ‘This is miraculously preserved.’ I glanced involuntarily at the sky, fearful that I might blaspheme to speak of miracles in the works of the pagans.

  ‘More than miraculous.’ Sigurd swung an arm in a rough arc about us. A low rampart of earth and dying weeds circumscribed the border of the mosaic, as if it had recently been dug clear. Peering closer, I could see white scuffs and scratches in the tiles where a hoe or spade might have scraped them. And, ringing Apollo’s head, the dark nimbus of a circular crack.

  I dropped to my knees and tried to prise my fingers into the gap. My nails were quickly as chipped and torn as the mosaic, but the fit was too snug: I could not work anything loose. Even the blade of my knife was too thick.

  ‘Look at the eye,’ said Sigurd, staring down from above me. ‘The pupil.’

  I twisted about and looked in the god’s eye. It was formed from a dozen or so tiles in whites and blues, but the black circle at its centre was not so solid. In fact, it was a hole, just wide enough for a man’s finger. I poked my forefinger in, and pulled away a round fragment containing the eye and its socket. In the recess beneath, a heavily rusted iron ring lay set in mortar.

  ‘Help me,’ I called, tugging on it. The broader slab that held the now one-eyed god’s face was too heavy. Sigurd crouched beside me and pulled the ring, lifting the disc free of the ground. Eager Varangian hands slid it away, as a wide black void opened in front of us.

  ‘We’re not going in there without light.’ Sigurd pulled a dry branch from the undergrowth and wrapped its end in dry grass and leaves. Taking the steel from the pouch on his belt, he struck streams of sparks from the flinty rock until the makeshift torch flared alight.

  ‘I’ve rescued you from dark holes before,’ he warned me. ‘This time, I go first.’

  Even with the added bulk of his armour, he fitted easily through the opening. It was not deep, for as his feet reached the bottom the crown of his head was still level with the ground and he had to crouch to press forward into the tunnel beyond. An isolated arm reached back into the well of sunlight to claim first his axe and then the torch. After a brief interval, and a muffled shout that all was safe, I followed him down.

  It must have been a millennium or more since the passage was cut, yet its brick-vaulted roof still held up the weight of the ages. I could see little, for Sigurd had already advanced some way ahead, but I felt the floor sloping gradually down as it led me deeper into the rock, under the cliff. I moved hesitantly, keeping my hands pressed against the mossy walls and wondering what devilment might lurk in the darkness ahead of me. Once, during my childhood at the monastery in Isauria, one of the monks had taken the novices into the hills, to the ruins of a temple where our ancestors had worshipped their false gods and idols. The building had been a wreck, its roof staved in and its marble long since plundered to adorn churches, yet still I had felt the ageless evil lingering in the crumbling stones. As the moon rose, the monk had told us of the blood sacrifices our forebears had made to their gods
of violence and vengeance, had spoken such vivid warnings against the long arm of the devil that eventually I became convinced that Satan’s dark fingers were poised behind me, waiting to snatch me away. Although I had since seen more of the works of Lucifer than I dared to remember, in the black confines of that tunnel I once again felt the pricking evil of his hand stretching towards me.

  ‘Look at this.’

  I had at last caught up with Sigurd, some thirty paces down from the entrance, where the tunnel opened out into a square chamber. The bricks which had lined the walls before now gave way to solid rock, except on the far side where a doorway led on to a second chamber briefly visible in the light of Sigurd’s torch. The smoke stung my throat and eyes, but I could see where he pointed. In the middle of the floor at our feet, a heap of ash and half-burned branches.

  ‘This is recent,’ I murmured. ‘What is beyond?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  I followed Sigurd through the far opening and into the room beyond. It was longer than the antechamber, some fifty feet in all, with a gently curving roof and a floor laid with mosaics. On either side, the rock had been carved into benches worn smooth with use, while the plastered walls were covered in faded paintings. At the back, a stone altar stood raised on a dais.

  It was as well that Sigurd held the torch, for I might have dropped it in shock. As it was, even his stout arm wavered. The images on the wall were grotesque, fantastical: processions of men with the heads of beasts and fowl; insects crawling out of the earth; a hand reaching from a tomb. The fiendish iconography continued on the ground, where a simple progression of mosaic tiles showed the silhouettes of more creatures, and dark symbols that I did not recognise. Halfway along the cave they vanished under a dark wave which had evidently been spilled across the floor.

  ‘It’s as well the bishop can’t see us now,’ Sigurd whispered. His voice was faltering, and it was only with the reluctance of a chained prisoner that he moved forward.

  ‘What is this place?’ The black veneer cracked and crumbled underfoot, and I could see pale imprints where boots other than mine had trod before it dried. I had a sickening feeling that I could guess its substance; its origin I did not care to guess. I touched my chest, where the silver cross hung under my armour, and prayed for a shield against the evils of this cave.

  ‘This is a place where we should not be.’ Sigurd held his torch before the altar, illuminating the frieze in its face. A man in a conical cap was wrestling with a bull, one arm grasping its neck while the other plunged a sword into its side. Blood gushed from the wound, while carrion-hungry animals looked on.

  ‘It must be some temple of the ancients.’ I did not recognise the gods from the poems and stories of the past, but I knew how profligate and varied their pagan deities had been. ‘But what did four knights from the Army of God purpose here?’

  Sigurd gave no answer. Resting his axe against the altar, he stepped away into the corner of the cave where he crouched down, reaching for something. As he turned back I almost shrieked, for in his hand he now brandished a cloven hoof.

  ‘If the devil’s about, he’ll be limping,’ he said, with more cheer than I could summon. ‘Although I never heard that he had the feet of an ox.’

  Trembling, I took the hoof from him. It gleamed in the torchlight, shadow deepening the furrow between the two toes. As he had said, it looked as though it had come from a cow or an ox, though in that heathen place I trusted nothing. I passed it back to Sigurd, remembered the harlot’s words by the riverside: They had a bullock with them. It screamed horribly.

  ‘What do you think . . . ?’

  I could not bring myself to finish the question, but Sigurd was less oppressed by our surroundings. He tossed the hoof in his hand and looked again at the images on the walls. ‘What do I think they did here? I think they did what we all would do with a bullock and a hidden cave. I think they ate.’

  ι

  We left the valley, so full of fruit and sin, and hurried back towards the city. For a time, the mysteries of the cave had numbed me to the danger of the Turks, but now I was forever glancing behind me, starting at every brushed leaf or snapping twig in the undergrowth by the roadside. I could not shake the fear that I had entered where I should not have gone, and that I might yet pay a divine price.

  ‘You saw the image on the altar,’ I pressed Sigurd. ‘A man killing a bull, doubtless in some pagan rite. If Drogo and his companions went down there with a bullock, it can only have been to one purpose.’

  Sigurd shook his head, though his eyes never left the road ahead. ‘At least two of them loved Christ so much that they had themselves carved head to toe with crosses. Do you think they would be the kind of men to make sacrifices to gods who have been forgotten for a thousand years?’

  ‘Do you rather think that they travelled miles into a dangerous land, happened upon a secret temple that had been buried for centuries, and used it to cook lunch?’

  ‘I can think of other pursuits they might have enjoyed down there – and better reasons for going to a valley full of eager women.’

  ‘Even for men who had carved themselves with pious crosses?’

  Sigurd snorted. ‘Perhaps . . .’ He paused. ‘What’s that?’

  I stopped, my hand dropping to my sword. ‘What?’

  Even as I asked the question, I heard it myself: a rumble in the air, as of distant thunder or tumbling rocks. But it did not cease or fade; instead, it grew ever louder, more ominous, the rushing approach of pounding hooves. I looked at the shallow valley around me, but the scrubby vegetation was too sparse to hide us and we would never reach the ridge in safety.

  ‘Form line!’ Sigurd wheeled about so that we faced back towards Daphne and dropped to one knee, setting his huge shield before him. His men fanned out beside him, locking their own shields into a wall, though it was barely enough to span the road. I squeezed in beside Sigurd, drawing my sword and thinking feverishly of Anna, of my daughters Zoe and Helena, and of the malignant curse which had attached to me in the cave.

  ‘We should have spears,’ the Varangian on my left muttered. ‘With spears, we might have a chance against them.’

  ‘Not against their arrows.’ Sigurd dug the butt of his axe into the ground and seemed ready to say something more. But at that moment the debate was cut short as horsemen cantered into view. Peering over the rim of Sigurd’s shield, I could see their horses’ gaunt necks thrusting forward, the spray of mud they kicked behind them, and the long spears their riders held erect. My low vantage kept me from seeing any but the leading riders and the churning mêlée of legs beneath, but the raised spears seemed to stretch too far back for hope.

  ‘Tancred!’

  Sigurd spoke as the cavalry slowed their advance, and the momentum which had pulled their standard out behind them gave way to a breeze which whipped it into our sight. All of us recognised it, the blue and crimson stripes surmounted with a rearing bear. It was the banner of Tancred, Bohemond’s nephew and lieutenant. Not one of the Varangians relaxed his guard.

  The Normans stopped a few paces away, grim figures in their coned helmets and mail. After a discomforting pause, their leader trotted forward.

  I had heard it rumoured, once, that he was the half-bred son of a Saracen, and there was certainly nothing in his features to deny it. Unlike most of his kinsmen, his hair and eyes were dark, the former spilling out in curls over his coif, the latter still immature, lacking confidence. Even after all the privations of the siege he still filled his armour, though he was smaller than Bohemond or Sigurd. At the age of twenty, his face had taken on the set of command but had not yet left behind the scars and pimples of youth. On the battlefield, I knew, his recklessness made men fear to serve him.

  ‘Greeks,’ he said, staring down on us. Despite the bear on his banner, his voice was more a chirrup than a growl. ‘You are far from home.’

  ‘Nearer than you,’ I answered.

  ‘What brought you here? I did not expect to find a
Greek risking his skin where the Turks prowl.’

  ‘Foraging.’

  Tancred’s horse, a dappled stallion, skittered uneasily. ‘Did you find food?’

  ‘Only this.’ Sigurd picked up the bullock’s hoof from where he had dropped it and tossed it up to Tancred. With a spear in one hand and a heavy shield on the other, Tancred could do nothing but watch it fall to the ground. He laughed.

  ‘Is that all? We have been foraging too – but to greater avail.’ He gestured forward with his spear arm. One of the men behind him loosed something from his saddle pommel and threw it forward, sniggering as it landed in front of us. I closed my eyes, trying to stop up my throat as the lifeless eyes of a Turk’s head gazed at me from the mud.

  ‘We have a score more, if you wish to see them,’ Tancred bragged. ‘Tribute to my uncle.’

  ‘Doubtless he is worthy of the gift.’

  ‘Worthier than a eunuch and his army of catamites and traitors.’ Tancred kicked his horse forward and reined it in just above us. ‘What are so few Greeks doing so far from the city, so feebly armed?’

  ‘Get off your horse and I will show you how feeble we are,’ Sigurd challenged him.

  ‘Perhaps you have an understanding with the Turks? Perhaps you have the safe passage of ambassadors?’ The bite in Tancred’s taunts seemed yet more dangerous because of the childish voice in which he spoke them. ‘What business does the King of the Greeks have with the Sultan? Would you make an alliance with him against us, divide up our lands as the wages of treachery?’

  ‘We came only to forage,’ I repeated. I could see the Normans growing restless, the spears inclining towards us.